


Recall the Future

by gabolange



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-12
Updated: 2011-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation, after the fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recall the Future

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in July 2007.

What is there to say? “I love you” does not come easily to Bill Adama’s lips; each of the last people to whom he said those words had died violently, painfully, alone. The words had rolled off his tongue for his youngest son, so eager to enjoy life, to live out his dreams. They had been more difficult when he said them to his surrogate daughter, so fierce and independent and who reminded him every day of that boy he had lost. And yet both had gone, victim to oversight or memory or both.

And so he could not say the words, not to his living son as Lee struggled with his own grief and confusion, not to the woman sitting across from him as the words she had spoken burned into his mind. “I have cancer, Bill,” Laura had said, the admission at once easier and more difficult to hear than it had been a lifetime ago. Before everyone else believed their life and faith hung on her survival or death.

“I see,” he says instead, wishing for better words and knowing there are none. What could he say? “I’m sorry,” perhaps, but he isn’t sure he is. He doesn’t want her to suffer, to die, but she has taught him to see the value in tragedy and he can see political use in her relapse. He hates himself, hates her for the images that flash through his mind of a sympathetic electorate, of the renewed faith of the true followers. These are not considerations he wants to acknowledge, nor would he on a different day in a different life, but she has taught him to think like the politician she is. He can almost hear her mulling over the political ramifications of her own death, and he cannot help but follow a similar course.

He pushes his mind away from such considerations, focuses his thoughts on the woman sitting across from him. Even if he cannot say it, she is someone he loves, if not for her political guile than for her constant support and periodic willingness to pretend the galaxy is not crashing in on them. For her ability to be his comfort, and for her patience in his attempts to be hers. “What’s the prognosis?” he finally asks.

He doesn’t look at her directly, doesn’t want to see her face, as if looking away and ignoring her presence will destroy the disease. From the corner of his eye he notices as she shrugs ever so slightly, a gesture others would miss or dismiss. “Cottle is hopeful,” she says, but he sees in the movement a dismissal of the gruff doctor’s opinion and a thought that perhaps the outcome doesn’t matter. “But it’s metastasized to my liver.”

He can consider the political ramifications of a world without Laura Roslin in it. He can see Zarek’s presidency laid out before him, a zealot catering to the masses and slowly undoing everything they had worked to create. A man willing to make tough decisions, Zarek, but in touch with what the people say instead of what they need. A politician like so many others. Baltar would press his advantage, but even Zarek wouldn’t be stupid enough to give that man any leeway.

It would be those who see Laura as Pythia reborn, as the dying leader, who would create the political landscape after her death. She would be deified, her decisions and speeches and opinions, even the bad ones, enshrined in some tome for the faithful to pray over, pour over, in search of prophetic wisdom. He does not want to see Laura remembered like that.

He would rather recall the way her smile shifted in an instant as her mood changed from cynical consideration to joy. He would prefer to remember her as she is now, resting on his couch, feet up and contemplating her half-full glass of ambrosia, the bronze liquid picking up the fire in her hair. But these are moments he could not share with even his closest friends, let alone with Laura’s faithful followers. Only he will live to remember Laura Roslin as she truly had been, and of the many terrible things about her relapse, he thinks this one’s the worst.

“Treatment?” he asks.

“Chamalla,” she says. “And . . . “ She waves a finger to indicate some drug she doesn’t recall, or doesn’t care to mention in the face of the more relevant return to hallucinogenic herbs as the best—the only—hope for her survival.

“Can it help?” he asks.

She shrugs again. “With the pain,” she says, staring over his shoulder to a blank spot on the bulkhead in his quarters.

“But the visions.” She had told him once, and only briefly, of her previous turn with the chamalla, of snakes and Cylons and nightmares from which she could not wake.

She smiles, but it twists rather than illuminates her face, as she remembers or tries not to remember, those experiences. “The visions,” she says. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll find Earth in my dreams.” Her tone is slightly ironic, as if she believes that it could happen but knows it will herald her death.

“Maybe,” he says. He does not say he loves that she can find amusement in her dire situation, both because it isn’t true and because he cannot bring himself to put into words the feeling that rises inside him. Fear for her, for him without her. They have seen that outcome, seen what Bill Adama can wrought without Laura Roslin’s steadying influence, and he will have to force himself to hear her voice in his ear when she is not there to set him right. But it is not only fear for the fleet, but for his heart, which rests in his throat as he hears her calm words. It beats heavily, and it is there that he can hear his mind’s true concern: Don’t die, Laura, don’t die.

But she will, if not from this than from something else. The cancer will take her, or another errant raptor will blow out the living section of Colonial One, or the Cylons will kill them all. Perhaps they will die of old age, together, in a cabin by a river. On Earth.

He nods. There is nothing to say, and so he shifts his gaze to look at her, finding her observing him with a quiet, wry smile and the image is almost more than he can bear. Perhaps she will find Earth in her dreams, but he hopes, always, to find her in his own.

He holds out a hand, which she grasps gently. There is so much he will never say, not to her or to anyone else, and he thinks of those words unspoken as he feels her steady pulse beneath his fingers. Instead, hoping she will not hear his voice catch, he asks, “Stay?”


End file.
